1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system optical media, and more particularly to a system and method for optical medium region protection.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems often include optical storage drives that read information from and write information to optical media. Optical media provide inexpensive and easy-to-use storage for relatively large quantities of information and are thus commonly used to store multimedia information, such as music and movies. For example, Compact Discs (CDs) use an infrared laser to store approximately 750 MB of information, a convenient size for musical albums, and Digital Versatile Discs (DVD) use a red laser to store approximately 4 GB of information, a convenient size for movies that use MPEGII compression with 480 p resolution. Recently, optical storage drives have been introduced that use a blue laser to store as much as 30 GB of information under the Blu-ray Disc (BD) or High Definition DVD (HD-DVD) standards. Optical storage drives are sold as stand-alone player systems with basic information handling system components that play movies and music for entertainment devices. Optical storage drives are also commonly incorporated in desktop and portable information handling systems so that the systems not only support presentation of entertainment information but also support storage and use of other types of information, such as documents, spreadsheets and presentations. For instance, business travelers with portable information handling systems have both a portable office to work on the road but also a portable entertainment device to watch movies and listen to music after the workday.
One difficulty associated with the convenience of optical media is that intellectual property owners face greater challenges in protecting their rights to entertainment content. For example, content owners, such as movie studios, sometimes impose region controls over content, such as theatrical movie titles, with release schedules varying by geographic areas based on regional business strategies. To manage geographical release strategies, the BD standard defines region codes that are included in the optical media and stand-alone optical drive player systems. Unless the region code stored on an optical medium matches the region code of a player, content playback is prohibited. Since home entertainment devices are typically designed for sale in a particular region, a hardware or firmware solution fixes the region code to prevent user alterations. However, portable information handling systems are often used during travel so an end user might have a legitimate reason to use optical media from more than one region. DVD optical drives have an internal non-volatile read/write buffer and a user interface that allow an end user to change the region code up to five times. The Blu-ray standard also allows up to five region changes, however Blu-ray optical drives for use in information handling systems do not have integrated hardware logic to manage region code changes. Software solutions run by an application on the optical drive or information handling system can limit region code changes, however, software solutions are somewhat easier to hack, such as by reinstallation of the application that manages the number of region code changes.